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Social Value in Public Procurement

This report proposes a system to transform public procurement in the UK so that it delivers many millions of pounds of social value. We can, for the first time, give companies and social enterprises a built-in incentive to provide social value, not just once but in an ongoing competitive race to outdo each other.
We are proposing a portal that would enable any public sector organisation to effectively and safely set criteria for social value in their tenders and have bidders’ performance against these criteria assessed. It is this objective measurement, made possible by the correct social value metric that can be fully automated, that unlocks the potential of the SVA.

Key Proposals for the Portal:

– The organisation can set either general social value criteria or set specific criteria for particular tenders, with our guidance on how to comply with EU procurement rules
– By using criteria that specify the ‘local’ social value added, organisations can legitimately give local firms a chance to do better than bigger (inter)national firms, and deliver to the UK £100m’s of social value annually.
– Bidders submit information on their ‘social value add’ to the portal. This information is independently verified and assessed against the council’s criteria.
– There is no cost to the public sector organisation. It will be funded by a 1% levy on the winning contractor to cover cost of independent social impact analysis and monitoring contract compliance across the period against Social Value Act and under the Best Value obligation
– A further optional 1% raised will go into a fund to support social value projects chosen by the public sector organisation and provide training for bidders, including local social enterprises, to maximise their social value add – raising millions of pounds of funding on top of the social value benefits.
– The system funds capacity development across the public, private, third, and community sectors in CSR and social value provision
– Stress testing the financials leads us to conclude the system has guaranteed sustainability and scalability to be adopted by other public sector organisations